


Cecil the Non-Binary Eldritch Horror

by TheBraveHobbit



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Genderless, Genderqueer Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBraveHobbit/pseuds/TheBraveHobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil exists somewhat outside of usual, neatly delineated definitions, and sometimes they have difficultly finding the words that best apply to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cecil the Non-Binary Eldritch Horror

Cecil’s not big on labels. Or, they are, except when they aren’t. Labels don’t work for a lot of things, and when you make your career in radio and you rely on words to convey your meaning, it’s important that the words are right. That the labels fit. You have to say exactly what you mean, and mean exactly what you say, or things get tangled.

Some things have to be put into words though, so one does one’s best.

  
Cecil doesn’t really have preferred pronouns, though “they/them/theirs” work best for them. They do answer to “he/him/his” without complaint, because they tend to use the male bathroom (if only to visit the cat) and they were designated male at birth, if birth is what you’d call it. Cecil’s not really sure they would.

Their skin is light, pale to the point of ivory beneath sparkling chormatophores. Some of those chromatophores only serve to reflect light, and Cecil’s skin looks scaly in the sun or beneath bright lamps or beside flickering bedside candles. It’s smooth, though, and soft. No callouses to be had, even on the palms of their hands or the soles of their feet. They don’t have hair on their arms or their legs or their chest, though the colorless eyes on either side of their nose have long, pale lashes and are framed by thick, crystalline brows.

They’ve been told that their multi-colored freckles are endearing, but Cecil doesn’t really have freckles at all, just those many chromatophores that flit across their person in response to stimulation. Emotions, for example, are extraordinarily stimulating. Cecil can’t help that they’re an emotional person, or that when they’re nervous bright green-purple-red-blue-pink chromatophores sparkle and shine across their cheekbones. Fear sends dark red and violent yellow dancing down their spine, and happiness—is happiness the word for when Carlos’ lips are so close to theirs?—happiness settles pink-blue-green in the hollow of deep-dipped collarbones.

Cecil’s hair isn’t as perfect as Carlos’. It’s thick and unruly and always full of tangles, with no more color to be found upon their head than in their eyebrows. They cut it short, because when it gets too long it tickles the flared tips of their ears and once it got knotted around the gauges in their lobe. That was somewhat unpleasant, and should be avoided in the future.

Their forehead is high and broad, but it looks less so because that third eye takes up so much space. It’s bigger than the matched set, but it’s horrid and nearsighted. Probably because there’s a bright purple pigment there, circling the green iris like witchfire behind the prescription monocle they have to wear. Even with that dense corrective lens, Cecil squints quite a lot. They’ll probably wrinkle young, more’s the pity. Imagine, crow’s feet in the middle of a forehead!

It’s strange, when most people hear their voice they seem to imagine someone much smaller. Hardly anything about Cecil is small, however, and people’s surprise never ceases to be amusing. Their eyes are large, their hands are large, their fingers are too long—that’s the extra joint, right before those broad, textured fingertips. Their shoulders are broad, too, and they roll them when they’re leaned back in their chair, as if thoughts were pouring from their too-long ears and needed assistance on their way to the floor of the station before making their escape. There’s too much spine and too much neck, or too little neck but more  _swivel_ than is strictly standard. Cecil can rotate their head nearly 180 degrees, and does so mostly to check Management’s door.

Of all their physical oddities…well, the tail is the one they’re most attached to. The indigo-black scales lay flat and smooth, articulating like armor and never catching on fabric or skin. Though the appendage is prehensile, they’re loathe to describe its motions as snake-like. It’s more graceful than that, more aware. Cecil’s tail is nearly a third arm—they can even write with it, when they’re inclined to approach a white board—and it’s useful when shuffling so many papers and notices and this-just-in’s for the evening’s broadcast. Mostly the tail is stationary, finding comfortable rest with the tip coiled around Cecil’s wrist. There’s piercings in the taper, that flat cartiligenous blade that functions so well as a fan when Night Vale’s lovely weather permeates the station, and when they’re feeling fidgety or restless Cecil spins those rings over and over, rubbing the metal between his fingers like a worry stone.

Cecil’s not beholden to labels. Words are tools to be used and bent and employed for a purpose, but their unavoidable limits do not confine their subject. Sometimes there aren’t words that fit Cecil’s needs, and in those cases they do what they can and work with what they have.


End file.
